The Hill: Steve Witkoff has no business negotiating between Russia and Ukraine

[Dennis Donovan]

The Hill - Steve Witkoff has no business negotiating between Russia and Ukraine

by Alexander J. Motyl, opinion contributor - 03/27/25 9:00 AM ET

The real estate developer Steve Witkoff, whom President Trump made his plenipotentiary in foreign conflicts, is either foolish, mendacious or naive — or perhaps all of the above. Whatever the case, he has no business negotiating something as complex and complicated as a putative peace between an imperialist Russia and its victim, Ukraine.

In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Witkoff made a whole series of astoundingly absurd claims. I’ll discuss only three: that Russia’s illegitimately elected president Vladimir Putin is not “a bad guy”; that Putin prayed for Trump after the failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last July; and that Russia has “reclaimed” the territories it currently occupies.

Let’s start with the third claim. One “reclaims” things one once possessed and “claims” things one wants to possess. The Russian Federation never possessed these territories; neither did its predecessor, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. The Russian Empire did possess them, but only after taking them from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Either Witkoff doesn’t understand what that silly little prefix “re-” means, or he’s legitimizing Putin’s expansion into all the territories once held by imperial Russia. Since Witkoff is “100 percent” certain that Russia doesn’t want to “absorb Ukraine,” we’re left with his indifference to grammar.

All one can say is heaven forbid that such a special envoy should have a hand in producing a diplomatically portentous document that could affect the lives of millions.

/snip

[Sneederbunk]

1. Might as well send Manafort.

[roscoeroscoe]

4. What fresh hell is this

Idiocracy II, Republican Boogaloo

[BootinUp]

2. I thought after watching a clip that he may have been a televangelist. nt

[SheltieLover]

3. Europe should be negotiating not slobby's flunkies

[dutch777]

5. Trump just wants to wave a deal around. The fact that it is full of holes and will blow up later is not his worry.

Almost all that you can look at that Trump is doing is more about the SHOW of doing something rather than doing something worthwhile and lasting. In some ways this is good as things may be open to actually being fixed later when capable adults are back in charge. The things I worry about more are lasting things like judgeships that are not easily undone.

[blue-wave]

6. The thing about Russian imperialism most people do not understand

is that it is based on the long game. I mean a very long game plan. It doesn't matter if it is or was Czarist Russia, Soviet Russia or the present day Russian Federation, Russia's expansionist policies remain constant based on the same concept: conquest through brutal genocide.

The areas of Ukraine presently illegally occupied by Russia today were once ethnically cleansed through genocide. In 1932-33 there was the Holodomor in the Donbas, of which Luhansk and Donetsk form part. This was the deliberately planned starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet (Russian) Kremlin. Once the Donbas land was eliminated of the Ukrainian population, the Russians proceeded to populate the Donbas with native Russians. This is why many of the people today in the Donbas speak Russian. The native Ukrainian speaking population was eliminated through genocide.

The same happened in Crimea in 1944. Soviet Russia cleansed Crimea of the Crimean Tatars.

There are many instances going back centuries of this Russian-Kremlin policy of expansion through genocide. We must not reward Russia for genocidal policy. The whole of Ukraine must be returned or this Russian madness will continue for many more centuries.